This week I discovered a little thank you gift on my back stoop rail: one dozen farm-fresh eggs. A gift I don’t take lightly (just colored lightly), farm-fresh eggs stand cockscombs above their grocery store counterparts. The yolks are as sunny as any summer day, standing proud and dome-like in a pool of resting whites. A quick spin of a dinner fork transforms yolk and egg into a frothy broth of gold.Scrambled, fried, poached or boiled, the incredible edible egg is even more incredible and more edible when you know the chicken’s name or at least where it nests. Here’s to farm-fresh eggs! Treat yourself to a dozen and you’ll never go back to store-bought.

As for my chickens (seen above), I lost them to some wily weasels or minks. I’m hesitant to restart the flock until I install gun turrets, land mines, and electric fences, and maybe even a crocodile-stocked moat for good measure.

I remember when our kids were small we used to stay at a farm with a guest house in Southern Illinois. In the morning the kids would go find fresh eggs in the coop, then eat “their” eggs for breakfast.